We had a little birthday party for Malachy. I have adorable nephews...


Two short videos:
Malachy opens his dinosaur
Malachy and Jonah play with the Dinosaur

He was so excited about that toy dinosaur. I wish I could have got his initial reaction on video. Jonah was stoked on it too. He'd been kinda cranky the whole time, but when that dino came out, he was suddenly very excited.

Happy Birthday to Me...

Today we did dinner at Bobby's parents' as usual, but they had an ice cream cake for me.


And here is some video of Caelyn acting very strange:
Silly Girl
Crazy Caelyn

We weren't sure what she was doing, but she wasn't crying and seemed to be having fun.

Schools

Today we went to pick Emma up, and headed to Bobby's parents', and when we got there his Nana starts telling this story about how she was driving around with her granddaughter the other day and there was crazy traffic and police with rifles and a police helicopter overhead. Then, she looked at the paper on this morning, and there had been a race riot at Fontana High School. 500 students. Started between a black girl and a latino girl, ended with the police shooting bean bags and smoking the kids out. Madness. There had been another scuffle involving 100 students on the same day at some high school in San Bernadino.

In the same paper, there was a little comic strip. An old man was standing next to a kid saying, "When I was your age, I had to walk 10 miles to school, uphill in the snow." The kid next to him responds, "Wow. You had it easy." Next to them is one of those newspaper dispensers showing the headline to be "SCHOOL SHOOTINGS!" Oddly true...

Some Random Thoughts

I've had some random thoughts about recent news that I've been dying to tell someone:
I read this article, and thought to myself, "really, why would anyone even participate?"
Now that N. Korea has tested nuclear weapons, does Team America: World Police seem oddly prophetic? (If you haven't seen that movie, I can't stress enough how funny and worth a rent it is)
With this whole Mark Foley - underage page issue: It seems to me this issue is more about homophobia than pedophelia. People are outraged that he was harassing these unerage pages, but the kids are like 16. If he were hitting on some 16 year old female pages, do you people would be panicing this badly? (By no means am I saying he didn't do anything wrong) Sure they'd be upset about the sexual harassment, but would they still be screaming pedo or are they just screaming pedo because it isn't pc to scream homo?
I heard a professor of Islamic studies in an interview last night claiming that Muslim society is the only one that western culture makes fun of? Has no one seen South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut? I'm fairly sure rednecks and jews and black people and asian people are adequately assailed.

Little Superstar

Makeup

I used to wear barely any make up at all. I literally had mascara and chapstick. Sometimes I'd use powder, but that was it.
No eyeshadow, no blush... definelty no foundation or eyeliner.

And while I like getting dressed up and wearing make up, it's a pain in the ass to do it every morning. It's seriously an extra 10 minutes of sleep I'm missing out on.
And my face stays clearer when I don't wear foundation.
And I like how I look when I'm not wearing make up.
And now, when I go out, I may wear my make up a little darker, but I look pretty much the same as I do when I go to work.

I've decided to stop. I'm going back to my mascara but sticking with gloss. No more foundation or shadow or blush...
I'll dress up when I want to, not because I feel I have to...

Winemaking

Last night was so nice. Bobby and I showed up at my parents' house around 6:30 to find my them and my brother Keith patiently destemming and crushing the grapes they'd grown to make wine out of. They had about an 80-20 blend of cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir. Unfortunately, they didn't have a grape crusher, and you'd be surprised how difficult it is to crush those darn things. They had started with a potato masher, but found it inadequate, so my dad, Keith and my brother Aaron had gone to the hardware store to see what they could find, and eventually came home with a giant potato masher. Unfortunately, that didn't work either. So by the time we'd arrived they'd been working on this for hours. Mom and I started making dinner while dad, Keith, and Bobby finished crushing grapes by putting them in casserole dishes and smashing them with spatulas. I don't know for sure about the others, but Bobby still has purple stains on his knuckles and fingernails. And some blisters. I had no idea it would be that much work. But this time it worked, and so by the time we needed someone to man the grill, we had plenty of bodies available.

Once the grapes were crushed the next step was to measure the sugar and acidity level of the juice. The sugar level is going to determine the alcohol content (more sugar, higher percentage), and the acidity is going to affect, well, the acidity. But this was our first time, and the directions were apparently written by someone that assumes you read all the directions before even starting (rather than our way of completing the steps as we read them the first time), so instead of adding 10 ml of this reagent 0.5 ml at time, we did the whole thing at once... oh, then make sure you add three drops of this reagent before you start adding that first reagent. So needless to say we had to start over.

We were an amusing bunch though, I must admit. You put that many scientifically minded people in a room together and then ask them to perform a little laboratory experiment, and it's like giving a baby candy - we were all on our knees crowded around the pool table discussing the anticipated color change. Because you need at least three people to determine when the liquid has gone from pink to green.

We learned that we would have wine that was low in alcohol content and high in acidity. I'm not expecting a fantastic bottle, but it was a good time. Aaron and his wife Patricia came by for dinner, and we all sat down to eat. Mom had made these jalepeno poppers from scratch, and they turned out to be quite hot. Even with dad, Bobby, and Aaron being the type that like food so hot it makes them sweat, everyone was about having a heart attack from the spiciness. I, being one that prefers mild salsa, didn't have any, so I was essentially enjoying the show. Troopers that they were, they all attempted having more. The second one Bobby ate about made him cry. It was amusing listening to them all snifle.

I'm a Wuss

I went to the doctor yesterday, and as it was my first appointment at my new doctor's office, she asked me all sorts of basic questions - including when I last had a tetnis shot. It was when I was 14, so I know that I'm two years overdue, but I have a phobia about needles (when I had my wisdom teeth removed and they put the needle in my arm for the anesthesia, I fainted; I don't even like seeing needles go into someone else in the movies). Well, my new doctor wasn't having it - she didn't ask me if I wanted to take care of that today or if I wanted to schedule an appointment - she just says that after my check up she's going to send the nurse in to give it to me.

OK.... I don't like needles. I know this. I'm a little anxious at this point, but the nurse hasn't come in yet, so I'm trying to read my book as I sit in the room waiting for this nurse, but I can't focus. She comes in with the needle, and I have to admit I panicked. I was flush and shaking and suddenly needed some water really bad. I thought I might pass out again.. When she finally did it, it didn't even hurt (this nurse was skilled) - felt like a little pinch. I felt so silly for freaking out as much as I did. I'm a wuss.

I will not be a lazy homebody!

I can choose to spend my free time doing anything - I can watch TV, read a book, play on my computer... or I can go outside. Remember outside? Where we played as kids.

Well, I have made a decision... I will not become this lazy person that just sits at home on her computer. It's June! and it's beautiful outside! So I've made some decisions for the summer::
I will limit the free time I spend on my computer
If I want to read I will go outside to do it
I will spend at least one day each weekend outdoors doing something active

Lovely weekend

We decided we werent going to spend entire weekends indoors anymore. Especially on weekends we have Emma. We spend so much of our lives indoors, sitting at our computers and almost no time outdoors. And its Summer! Our goal is to spend at least one day each weekend outside, being active going to the beach, the park, swimming, socializing whatever.

We intended to go to the beach on Saturday, especially since our beach jaunt two weeks ago had been so lovely. We were delayed some, but we finally made it. Had a lovely time read, moved sand around as if we were building a sandcastle, buried Emma in the sand

Saturday night we spent at Bobbys parents house, mostly listening to his great-grandfather talk about his life. The man is 95 years old, so he had some great stories. Some things that stood out to me: He said, There will be a woman president, there will be a black president, (which for someone in his age bracket seems a remarkable sentence) hes been a democrat his entire life and is ready to vote for Hillary; His proudest moment was the day he married his wife, and he wishes he still had her; He quit smoking in 1942 because someone told him he couldnt do it, he quit drinking because someone told him he couldnt do it, and during prohibition he sure knocked it back (someone told him he couldnt do it).

I escaped for a bit in the morning to visit my parents and wish my big bro a happy Fathers Day., but the rest of Sunday we spent at the park, playing softball (well, as much as you can when you only have between 5 and 14 people all day), having a water fight, barbequing It was a good time. I wasnt as diligent with the sunscreen Sunday, and I have a mild burn (and bad tan lines) to show for it, and unfortunately Im a bit out of shape so Im sore now from the softball. When we were just fielding some balls, waiting for folks to show up, it was really heating up and all I could think was how nice some water balloons would be right now so I ran off to get some. Wouldnt you know no water balloons at Stater Bros. or Target. How does this happen? Its June!

Overall, it was a lovely weekend, and Im glad we spent it outside, rather than in our box.